Pratini waves the white flag over FFP

Rumour is, on 29th June, Pratini will admit defeat over FFP and introduce new governing rules that means;

- all owners can spend whatever they want, as long as they can cover any losses with their own money

- a new set of governing rules will be introduced

- a possible link to academy spending on any club that post a loss (a percentage of the loss must be invested in youth football at the club)

So, basically, 10 clubs in Europe have drawn up law suits against FFP (just as we have all been saying they should) and this idiot has now decided that, instead of facing the possibility of bankruptcy for UEFA, they will introduce new measures to avoid any litigation.

Well, I'd go one step further and tell UEFA, you can give us back our FFP fine plus interest, as it turns out it was illegal as many suggested.

What a fucking joke UEFA are.

So, do we do our business ASAP to avoid agents and clubs 'upping' the price of their players after this ruling?

Lots to consider now - and I say get them in early with an offer they can't refuse now, if money is no object, as I can see the likes of Minola and the others waiting until July to sell their players.

Also, the flip side is we can sell off the shit we have for more money and the likes of TLMLF can be bought by Inter Milan for £20-30m as FFP won't matter.

All it means is the disparity between the big clubs with money, will get bigger unfortunately....but as long as they introduce something that ensures clubs invest in youth football - so be it.

It was all wrong to start with - as we've all said a thousand times, it restricts free trade - but that's not to say UEFA cannot introduce new rules that help other lower league clubs and ensure the future of footballing academies - if that's on their agenda.

Just found this:

http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11095/9855591/platini-reveals-uefas-ffp-rules-to-be-eased

We won't sue, but we should. Goalposts moved again.

We should sue for the lost opportunity to win the PL and CL because of UEFA's illegal limiting our spending and other sanctions.

I think all 10 clubs allegedly wanting to sue, should go ahead and sue them....tell them to fuck right off.

Changing the rules is only a small step to redemption, we've suffered because their illegal rules for the past year or so....affecting our spend this season compared to other clubs, affecting our CL squad numbers - which in theory has led to Jovetic being isolated at the club.

It's wrong - and a change of the rules only papers over the illegal cracks that UEFA and FIFA have created.

They SHOULD be held accountable for their actions and policies.

Topdawg wrote:We won't sue, but we should. Goalposts moved again.

We should sue for the lost opportunity to win the PL and CL because of UEFA's illegal limiting our spending and other sanctions.

Here's another thought:  How about we don't sue?  Maybe Pratini will look more favourably on us and we'll find ourselves being drawn against the "cold balls" of Basel and BATE 

It'll make a nice change from the usual group of death, for sure!

I would've liked it to be about the rags spunking vast sums on players to get them back into the CL, thus highlighting the hypocrisy of the "buying your way in" comments, but I suspect it's more to do with his old club who don't want to follow the rules.

It's all about PSG...simple as.

It's about him showing clemency and doing the right thing - problem is this analogy:

You get hounded and accused by the Police for Rape or Murder, your reputation is tarnished forever. It's proven you are innocent, you get compensated - but your reputation will never be the same.

So, we'll always be tarnished with the same brush - so fuck em, sue the arse of UEFA and that prick.....we've nothing to lose. If we get drawn in another bad pot - it only goes to show we've been targeted. 

Balls in our court now - advantage to us for a change.....make it pay!

Individual players could sue UEFA. Why should Jovetic miss out because off their illegal and unfair rules?

True.....I say fuck em. Don't let them get away with anything, unless we negotiate a massive compensation deal...pot 1 draw and a 35 man CL squad! 

I think we should be allowed to play with 12 men next season, just to make things up to us...

Topdawg wrote:I think we should be allowed to play with 12 men next season, just to make things up to us...

Barca would still beat us

You just know they get around this by implementing a home grown players must play every game rule. Nothing about finances.

Say what you like about Michel Platini, but he’s no slouch. It only took the ruination of the Bundesliga, the reduction of the giants of Italian football to neutered also-rans, the destruction of leagues across Eastern Europe, £100million-plus in unjustly levelled fines, the milking of fans for owner profit at clubs such as Newcastle, legal actions in double figures across Europe and the creation of a sinister, untouchable European elite for him to work out what some of us knew eight years ago.
Namely, this. ‘Those who despise Chelsea invariably fail to answer one basic question: how else is a team meant to break into the cosy club that is the Champions League, and remain there, without spending beyond its means?’ That was from a column in The Times published on February 21, 2007. You’re welcome. Weekly bulletins on similar lines have been issued since.

Hell, it’s been a long road but finally someone at UEFA saw sense. Financial Fair Play in its present form destroys competition. It creates, in Germany and elsewhere, worthless one-team leagues, it strangles investment and discourages new money from coming into the game. It makes heroes of profiteers like Mike Ashley and Karl Oyston and villains of enhancers such as Sheik Mansour and Jack Walker. It creates inevitabilities and foregone conclusions and values accountancy over ambition.
Its dismal mantra was adopted by some of football’s slowest minds, and as a result may yet destroy Queens Park Rangers. All of this was entirely predictable and, baby, I’ve got the back catalogue to prove it. Anyway, hate to say I told you so, as The Hives sang, so we’ll move on.
Here is today’s question. Why is it that whatever is good for the two Milan clubs also happens to be what is best for football, according to UEFA? Ever wondered that? Whatever the Milan clubs want, they get. When they wanted FFP, in it came; now they want more financial freedom, they get that, too.

Don’t be mistaken. The relaxation of UEFA’s wrecking ball regulation is a mighty positive for football, particularly if it ensures that, from here, owner investment must be a gift. UEFA should also consider simultaneously closing loopholes such as Roman Abramovich’s £1billion loan to Fordstam, the company through which he owns Chelsea. This would prevent another Portsmouth from occurring.
Yet there are plenty of clubs and recent developments that could be cited as highlighting the need for change in FFP rules. Bayern Munich’s stockpiling of the best domestic talent in Germany; the summer plundering of Southampton; nine consecutive title wins for BATE Borisov in Belarus; the failure to find a buyer for Everton; the fine of roughly £50m for Manchester City, despite their wonderful regeneration project in east Manchester.

Yet the name that is said to have provoked this rethink at UEFA is that of AC Milan. Silvio Berlusconi wants to sell his club, but can’t, because a new owner would need to spend heavily to move Milan from midtable torpor, and UEFA rules do not allow that. So now it’s all change.
When Platini introduced FFP, he cited the wishes of the club bosses as high onhis list of considerations. ‘It is mainly the owners who asked us to do something,’ he said before the Champions League draw in 2009. ‘Abramovich, Berlusconi and Massimo Moratti at Inter. They do not want to fork out any more.’
Not much of a philosophy, then, was it? I don’t want to spend my money, so you can’t either. I’ve got what I want, so let’s just pull up this drawbridge.

Abramovich, we know, was a turncoat. Having bought his way into the elite, he crossed the floor because he didn’t want other new owners matching his spending power and challenging Chelsea’s supremacy. These are the principles that Jose Mourinho now espouses as if they are (a) noble and (b) his own.
For Berlusconi and Moratti, however, it was different. Their clubs were part of the establishment, but maintaining that status with men like Abramovich around was becoming a huge financial drain. Tie spending power to revenue and that was the problem solved, they thought. The new owners from the east would be shackled and the status quo maintained.
What they had not anticipated was the parlous financial state of Italian football. Poor matchday revenues, underdeveloped commercial opportunities with many clubs not owning their stadiums and a TV deal which paled into insignificance beside the sums on offer in England and Spain. Suddenly committed to spending what they earned, the influence of the Milanese clubs collapsed.
In 2012, AC Milan sold their two best players, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Thiago Silva, and the current squad is a pale imitation of the glory days. Inter were largely jettisoned by Moratti in 2013 — he retained a stake of 28.1 per cent — but new owner Erick Thohir has been unable to move forward, saddled with the demands of FFP and huge debt.
So now the protectionist, exclusionist plan A has failed to work, the Milan clubs have advanced plan B: back to the future. The principles they demanded threatened to ruin the pair of them. But, don’t worry, they’ve got some new ones over here.
That is likely to be the stance of the English elite, too. They will need to find a fresh position on the moral high ground, because the old sermons won’t convince any more.

Financial Fair Play, we were so often told, came from a desire to prevent another implosion such as the one at Portsmouth or Leeds United. That is why Manchester City should be banned from Europe, or, as Mourinho suggested, docked points.
Yet if UEFA rules now prevent owners or third parties from loaning clubs huge sums of money — and then just as airily demanding arbitrary repayment — these financial catastrophes will no longer be possible.
So what will be the case for FFP then? The elite will be forced into the open to admit it is not Portsmouth who are being protected, but the financial and political supremacy of Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool or Arsenal. David Gill, former chief executive of United, was among those who helped frame FFP. Amazingly, what was best for the European game appeared to correspond precisely with what was best for his old club. It was the same for Karl-Heinz Rummenigge at Bayern Munich, too.
But not for the rest of Europe. As Arsene Wenger pointed out yesterday, the Premier League’s new television deal is the other vehicle for change, terrifying the continent with its enormity. If English clubs have so much additional revenue then they can spend accordingly and blow their rivals away. This was always a complication.
In FFP terms, one size could never fit all. How can clubs be tethered to turnover if Barcelona and Real Madrid’s television deal is constructed in an entirely different way from that of the rest of Europe?
How can clubs all work under the same financial regulation when each country has different laws on, for instance, taxation — meaning at one stage it would have cost Paris Saint-Germain roughly 30 per cent more to pay Wayne Rooney the same salary he earns at Manchester United.

How can there be one rule for a league that routinely receives forms of state aid, when others do not? The only way FFP could ever have been fair was if UEFA took into account the variables in different domestic competitions, and addressed issues of wealth distribution in the Champions League.
Once the size of the Premier League’s television deal became apparent, however, it was plain that parts of continental Europe were simply going to become uncompetitive. Milan, for example. Now those clubs are back in the game, and so are a lot of others — which is just as it should be.
So Platini got the right result, eventually, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. Next time, he shouldn’t try so hard to please the entitled elite. ‘It’s not easy,’ said Wenger of FFP yesterday. ‘There are very intelligent people at UEFA who have worked for a few years now on that problem.’ Really? They should have worked harder then.
Any negative that can be seen from eight years out by a bloke with an E grade maths O level sitting in his front room, really shouldn’t have been too much for Europe’s brains trust to compute. Fair play didn’t have to be rocket science; it just had to be fair.

Very good article by Samuel.

Of course, the European 'elite' only think of themselves.

Open letter to the solicitors of Karl Oyston:

Dear Sirs,

I would like to make it clear that the inflammatory remarks posted on this forum about your client are the views of the original author only (Mr. Martin Samuel) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the administrators, moderators or members of this forum.  The article was posted in reference to the issue of FFP and was not intended as a commentary on the alleged behaviour of your client.

Regards,

Leopold
Admin, 606BlueMoonLegends



Right, that should have us all in the clear!  Nice article from Samuel once more about the wretched FFP, which he rightly notes is going to do more to kill QPR than save it.

Well, after he's finished suing all the Blackpool fans, he's bound to try elsewhere, isn't he?

I think Samuels is the best Football Journo out there, brilliant article.

We still need to sue UEFA for all we are worth though, even after they get rid of it. We are by far the only real team to have suffered under FFP.

Now lets get on with ruining football again. Messi anybody, 500K a week?

Laugh my arse off if we got him and paid him £500k pw, just to piss off Platini.

What has annoyed me more than anything, is listening to some journo's proclaiming the likes of Chelsea, LFC, United, Arsenal etc haven't fallen foul of FFP like us - and that it just goes and gives us a licence to spend stupid money.

Well sorry journo's:

As Martin Samuel points out - Roman has given Chelsea a £1b loan...not a gift, a loan. We haven't done that, it's been the owners money, not a loan that's paid for what we have.

Chelsea have also, lost money almost every single season, in some cases over £50m....but because they actually broke even in the year of FFP, it doesn't matter - wtf?

LFC have lost fistfuls of dollars, season in, season out.

Arsenal have had to charge the most ludicrous amounts for season tickets every year - basically telling the fans - "you'll pay for our development, debt, player signings etc, not us the board"

United generate huge wealth each season - but considering it's been 10 years almost to the day, that the Gimp family took control of a once solvent club and burdened it with £850m worth of debt - how come after all this time, they are still in debt to the tune of £360m? If it takes the same amount of time to pay off the debt that they've had for the last 10 years, it'll be 2020 before they are clear of it.....which in turn, will potentially mean that they have filtered away over £100m in interest payments....but that's OK?

Pisses me off - and I agree, tell Platini to fuck off and reimburse our fine, as he couldn't give a shit about us anyway, as long as United, Bayern and the crooks in Italy are OK.

Hasn't united's debt increased over the last year?

I think all 'big' clubs in Europe are worried about the spending power of the PL. Next season we're going to have 20 of the top 40 t/o clubs in the world. The new tv deal means the likes of Bournemouth could have more income than most big clubs on gates of 12K. 

Who'd want to buy a big club under the current rules if they can't invest in it to get it back to the top?

They won't, it's that simple, a la AC Milan.